Peer to Peer Magazine

P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | W I N T E R 2 0 1 9 45 The new norm Clients are now expecting their legal counsel to bridge technolo, innovation and business, in order to deliver an impactful service. As the utilization of technolo becomes further embedded into legal practice, lawyers will be put under increasing pressure to adopt tools to benefit their clients. Ultimately, what will be asked of the lawyers of tomorrow is that they be excellent technologists as well as lawyers. Lawyers will need to develop new skills and knowledge sets: • Business and project management skills. Whether a lawyer is advising a business client or directly involved in running the law firm or corporate legal department itself, they must have keen business skills in the post-billable-hour era. Those include an understanding of business operations, risk, and finances, along with the ability to make sound decisions about the business's goals and directions. Understanding how to optimize and improve processes will become crucial. • The ability to collaborate with lawyers, other professionals, and technolo. Lawyers can no longer serve their clients by sequestering themselves in a quiet library for hours of research. Today's legal marketplace is highly collaborative, demanding cooperative work with other lawyers and coordination with legal operations professionals, project managers, software developers, and technolo itself. For example, at the advanced end of this spectrum, legal engineers seek to automate whatever legal tasks they can so that they can focus on more nuanced analyses, but all lawyers should be comfortable working in harmony with other interests. The focus here should be to use technolo advancements that reduce law's labor- intensive approach to problem solving. • Knowledge about the shortcomings of technolo and the ability to work with data. It's a mistake to think that legal technolo is perfect. In fact, it can amplify human shortcomings, like when artificial intelligence systems trained on biased data turn out to perpetuate that same bias. The successful lawyer of the future will appreciate both the strengths and the weaknesses of technolo and will be comfortable working with data to shore up those vulnerabilities. It will be wise to remember that innovation doesn't always mean leveraging technolo. Clients care about getting results and knowing that you have their best interests at the forefront. Innovation should be measured by how impactful it is to your clients instead of how innovative the firm thinks it is (see sidebar). All areas of practice are starting to feel the benefit of leveraging technologies – from client intake, document review, through to transaction management as the deal is executed – these new ways of working are disrupting traditional models. What is seen as disruption today, will eventually become the new norm, and those that do not approach the space with a growth mindset will struggle to keep up. New worldviews Beyond the specific areas of knowledge and skills, there are several new mindsets that all members of the profession will need to adopt. Ultimately, it falls to the professional to ensure that technolo brings real business benefits beyond the hype. There is a seismic shift in the complexity chain of legal work, and firms will need to expand the definition of their known universe The changing tide, how the measure of what an "elite" law firm has changed over time Looking back at the legal profession – an odd behavior can be observed around the measure of success. It's a peculiar thing for a profession to be viewed and measured though the lens of its own making. It perpetuates the self-selection bias giving skewed results towards what should be considered an "elite" law firm. In days long gone the measure used to be the ability to provide a high degree of bespoke work, which in turn attracted the best legal talent. A significant change came in the 1980s when the figures for Profit Per Equity Partner (PPP) first started being published publicly. We are now on the precipice of the next shift – one where we look at the profession from the viewpoint of the client. It is becoming a reality to measure yourself through the value you add to those that you serve. The question to ponder is how will this be defined – what will be the new measuring stick? How will one know if a firm is successful?

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